Bentley Design Boss Gives Details on Future Bentley EV’s Styling

Bentley has been extremely busy of late, expanding and renewing its portfolio, and now we’re getting an early vision of the ultra-luxe automaker’s first full battery-powered EV. We sat down with Bentley design director Stefan Sielaff earlier this year in Geneva, to get an idea of how the forthcoming fully-electric car may take shape.

Bentley is awash in activity of late. The nearly 100-year-old English brand is busy launching the Bentley Bentayga V8 and the Continental GT—its two most important, certainly best-selling—models, and has just revealed the Bentley Bentayga Hybrid at the Geneva auto show. While that will represent Crewe’s first foray into the electrified vehicle world, we’ve also known for some time that a full EV is in the works.

Now it appears that EV could be here fairly soon. Bentley will celebrate its centenary next year, and we’re told the EV is expected to follow shortly after. Which means possibly in 2020, perhaps as a 2021 model. When it arrives it will be sporting an all-new architecture underneath, possibly a version of Porsche’s Mission E platform, called J1, internally. Sielaff says this opens up new design possibilities.

“I think we should do differentiation between the combustion world and the electric world. And this has to with with proportions, and then the details.” Sielaff specifically indicates we can expect to see a fresh expression and style in the Bentley world.

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“For example, we don’t need high bonnets [hoods]. I mean, why? Obviously too low isn’t good because that doesn’t represent Bentley as a brand, but we don’t need them as high. Another thing is the dash-to-axle ratio, which in traditional cars was expressed with a long, long longitudinal motor, and this is very typical for Bentley, but do we need this in the future? I personally don’t think so. I think we can express a Bentley also by changing the design criteria quite a bit, but also showing in the same moment this is a different architecture, and this is also obviously a different product.”

Bentley’s design director also believes the interior space will become increasingly important. Traditionally, you “fall in love with the exterior, and then you go into a long-lasting partnership and marriage with the interior. It could change. It could be a paradigm change where we consider the interior more than today. A lot of luxury battleground is on the interior.”

Sielaff says a benefit of the electrical architecture is the ability to reimagine the cabin.

“We have space, and the question is what do you use it for? You always need somewhere for luggage. But what if you could use this space to provide luxury services. Wouldn’t it be nice if, from the front of the car, an object arrives delivering you a fresh cup of coffee?”

At last year’s Geneva Motor Show, the luxury automaker showed off the EXP 12 Speed 6e Concept (photo above), a striking electric convertible that boasted features such as an illuminated “6e” in the grille, a re-imagined steering wheel, an OLED touchscreen, and more traditionally, plenty of leather and warm wood. Sielaff says the forthcoming electric car would be sporty, but suggested it would be more practical, which we interpret as allowing for more than just the two seats of the concept.

Bentley’s chief designer also says that while the freedom of a new electrical architecture allows you to create new proportions and designs, it has to be tempered with some caution. “It frees you up on the one hand, but it also makes you very careful, because you can’t do damage to the brand, it has to be a Bentley in the end.”